Supergirl Cancelled by a CBS – Moves to CW & Vancouver for Season 2

From the beginning of the pitch stages of SUPERGIRL people thought it would end up on The CW since the Greg Berlanti-produced project was from the same team that produced THE FLASH and ARROW and was putting together DC’S LEGENDS OF TOMORROW for them as well but CBS took the show at it’s steep $3 million an episode license fee.

The first season’s ratings on the surface didn’t look good, but when you looked deeper at it especially taking in the “live plus-7” estimates it was a very successful show in a highly desirable demography. Supergirl averaged a 2.5 rating in adults 18-49 and 10.03 million viewers overall in Nielsen’s “live plus-7” (meaning people watching live or watching it on DVR within seven days) estimates. This made it CBS’ top-rated rookie drama this season in that demo and was also its youngest-skewing drama with a median age of 55.6.

The stories going around were that Warner Bros TV was trying to work out a deal and bring down the budget for a renewal by CBS. Part of the major issue was that the show was shot in LA (as I detailed in this post: Supergirl Renewal Drama Continues – Possible Move To Vancouver ) and how they had expected tax credits to offset the cost but they never got approved. WB started the steps to move the show from LA to Vancouver where production is much less expensive and tax credits from the canadian government are more assured.

Throughout all this the stories that the show would move to The CW abounded and with CBS owning a portion of CW it was a possibility just like The Flash crossing over from his CW show.

In the end CBS has cancelled Supergirl and The CW has picked up the show with budget cuts and a move for the production from LA to Vancouver Canada to save money.

This makes perfect sense and should result in dramatic savings not for the least reason of the other Berlanti shows are based there and Supergirl can share some of the facilities and support staff of Arrow, The Flash and Legends of Tomorrow.

Will this also mean some of the cast may not get picked up for Season 2? Possibly. One of the hollywood reports I read said that some weren’t happy at the move.

It will absolutely mean a lot of production crew will lose their jobs since the show will need Vancouver based Canadian crew to meet the production requirements.

I’m sure we’ll be hearing from the cast sooner than later on how they publicly feel about the move and get details on how the show will change with this but for the fans, it’s a win:

Supergirl lives to fight another day and we get more of the Danvers Sisters.